BBC ‘Pays double the rate for their taxis’

BBC staff have slammed their bosses for paying double the going rate for taxi journeys made at the licence fee payers’ expense.

A story in the Daily Telegraph reveals that the Corporation pays £10m a year for over 350,000 journeys by staff and guests.

To handle this business, the Corporation has a contracted supplier of taxis, which are booked through an internal website. But staff say that the taxi firm is giving a raw deal and charges on occasion almost double the rate of local cab hire companies.

The discrepancy was highlighted in the BBC’s internal magazine Ariel, following a letter from staff member Marc Settle, a project producer at the BBC Academy’s College of Journalism.He said the organisation’s workers are told to book cabs through internal website Gateway, which promises ‘More money for programmes’.He added: “When you book a taxi via Gateway, you’re greeted with a comforting strapline of ‘More money for programmes’.”Is this actually the case? I rang the number on Gateway to get a quote for a journey from Tonbridge in Kent to Gatwick and was told £87.”That seemed high, so I rang a few local companies and, on average, was quoted £45.”Another journey from Stanmore to Heathrow was £61 via Gateway yet a local company quoted just £25.”I know that any receipts which are submitted need then to be processed, and that has a cost. Equally, a central booking system may have merits for auditing purposes.”I would like to know, though, why taxi journeys booked through the central system seem to cost twice as much as those booked locally.”

The article reported that the BBC maintained that costs were higher in order to ensure that taxi firms were ‘legally compliant’ and that drivers were vetted properly.